Mr. Brown did most of the talking when they hired him that morning, but both well-dressed men told him not to expect the usual cloud. “We’re testing air currents and water movement. We need you to drop low and spray the lake, then up along the river. The wind is from the northwest and we need to see which distribution method reaches Chisum first.”
“Won’t that be dangerous?” Curtis had never been asked to do anything like that before. “I don’t believe it’s a good idea to put chemicals in the water.”
Blank-faced, Mr. Brown and Mr. Green exchanged glances. Mr. Green spoke up for the first time since they shook hands, talking around the ever-present cigarette in the corner of his mouth. “These canisters don’t contain dangerous chemicals. They’re full of microscopic metallic particles our scientists call ‘Gold Dust.’ It will dissipate in the water without harming fish, animals, or humans. We have people at the pump station who will be testing for the particles to see how fast they reach Chisum. It’s all very scientific and as safe as Pepsodent.”
“Is it real gold?”
“No. That’s just what the eggheads in the research labs call it.”
So there he was, flying only forty feet above the lake. The dam quickly came into view and he shut off the flow. He pulled the stick back and the plane rose. The boomerang-shaped dam quickly disappeared under the wings. He banked over the Sanders Creek bottoms toward Arthur City, Texas, five miles away.
His next target was the muddy, serpentine Red River.
Two gas stations and a country store on Highway 271 were his markers. He thought of the stories he heard when he was a kid of a bustling Arthur City before the turn of the century, perched on the edge of the river thick with runoff in wet weather. Wide in places and narrow in others, the river twisted like a snake between sandbars and hardwood-lined banks.
He banked into a sharp U-turn on the Oklahoma side of the river, buzzing the cluster of rough cinder-block gun and knife honky-tonks nicknamed Juarez. They looked worse than the trio of structures in Arthur City, and were the source of trouble and worry for both states.
When Curtis passed over the iron railroad bridge spanning the Red, he checked his altitude once again as instructed. At one-thousand feet, he followed the river west for four miles. The contents streamed out until he saw Palmer Lake in the distance. He pushed the lever into the Off position and relaxed.
His job was finished and he settled back to enjoy the flight, thinking of the Ag Rep’s explanation. It made sense that the light breeze would catch the particles and they could estimate the time it took to travel from the point of distribution to the county seat in Chisum twenty miles south.
Lots of potentially dangerous chemicals came out of Curtis’ nozzles in the course of a year and he’d always said the cotton poison and defoliants were dangerous to bugs, plants, and people alike, despite what the vendors said. This one seemed as safe as…what did they say?…toothpaste!
You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent! Curtis checked his watch and grinned as he recalled the familiar commercial.
For the past two years it had become his habit to buzz Constable Ned Parker’s house after he finished a job so Ned’s grandson, Top, could wave. He felt sorry for the skinny, asthmatic youngster who reminded Curtis of himself when he was that age. He’d already decided to ask Ned if the boy could go up with him soon for a ride.
He winced when a sudden sharp pain lanced from his colon to knot his abdomen. Hissing, he tightened up, waiting for the familiar jolt to go away. They were getting fewer as the weeks passed, and he was thankful for that.
The polyps Dr. Heinz had removed were gone, but it was taking longer than he liked for his body to heal. Doc told him not to worry, that he’d been forced to be what he called “more invasive” than he’d planned, but the doctor had removed everything during the surgery that had posed a danger and said Curtis was well enough to fly.
The jolt passed and he relaxed. That one was much shorter than they’d been only a few days earlier. In the aftermath of that brief spasm, Curtis felt remarkably better.
He banked into another U-turn and bled off enough altitude to fly over Center Springs’ two country stores and domino hall. He wig-wagged the Stearman’s wings at the farmers, who stuck their heads from under the porch overhang at Neal Box’s rural general store. The Wilson boys jogged down the unpainted steps and waved their arms, pointing behind the crop duster.
Curtis frowned and twisted around to look over his shoulder. Twin streams of vapor stretched as far as he could see. “Oh hell!” Something was wrong and he forgot he’d been hurting only moments before.
He hit the shutoff valve again and again, but the streams continued uninterrupted. The unfamiliar equipment worried him from the start and he’d argued that they should use his spray rig, but the Ag Reps wouldn’t hear of it.
“Damned low-bid government crap!”
He reached under the dash, thinking it might be an electrical short. After jiggling the wires with his fingers, he twisted in the seat to peer over his shoulder at the flow that was much thicker than he expected. Curtis fought the malfunctioning equipment until he caught a flicker in his peripheral vision of drifting down to barely above the treetops. Ned Parker’s house appeared dangerously close off the point of his starboard wingtip.
“Jesus!” Muscle memory took control and Curtis pulled back the yoke, accelerating at the same time. The wasp junior Pratt and Whitney engine roared and the plane quickly regained altitude. He banked left over Sanders Creek and the pastureland beyond. When he was clear and in a safe zone, he thumped the solenoid, hoping it might close the valves.
When he glanced back up, he was too close to the tall oak trees again. Putting both hands on the yoke, he flew straight for several minutes, deciding what to do. The bottoms appeared, green fields of varying colors and patterns bordered by roads and trees.
A straight dirt road running between two fallow fields was the perfect place to land. He adjusted his flaps, cut the biplane’s speed, and landed, taxiing slowly in a cloud of dust before rolling to a stop near a large red oak tree. Sighing with relief, Curtis climbed out of the cockpit while the engine idled.
Alone, he wasn’t worried about the contents still hissing from the nozzles. It didn’t take but a moment to tap the canisters’ valves closed with a wrench. The first tank was easy. He walked around the tail. Small bubbles formed and popped from the brass aperture opening. Curtis tapped that one also and it closed, but not before he realized the tank was empty.
Some of the contents were on his hands. Curtis sniffed his fingers to find no scent at all. “Gold Dust, my ass.” He absently rubbed his palms dry on his worn khakis, stowed the wrench back in the toolbox, and returned to the cockpit.
The government Impala was still parked under the pecan tree beside his pole-barn hanger when Curtis landed and rolled to a stop beside their car twenty minutes later.
The government men in fresh crewcuts were sitting on the Impala’s fender, smoking. They slid off and waited for the plane to completely stop before approaching. The tallest, who called himself Mr. Brown, took one last drag from his cigarette and thumped the butt away.
Curtis climbed down. “Well, that’s that.”
Mr. Brown pushed the dark shades up on his nose. “Did you make the complete route?”
“Sure did.”
Mr. Green popped their trunk and joined them wearing a thick pair of rubber gloves reaching to his elbows. Slender and bent at the shoulders, the gloves over his suit coat made him look like a mad scientist. Without a word he knelt under the starboard wing and disconnected the tank and spraying equipment.
Curtis started forward to help, but Mr. Brown took his elbow. “You need to let him do this.”
“Two are faster than one.”
“I know, but he’s practiced this hundreds of times, and besides, those tanks
are so cold they’ll strip the skin from your hands.” He reached into his jacket, distracting Curtis from what was happening under his plane. “As we agreed. The remaining five thousand.”
“You fellers sure are free with my tax money.”
Mr. Brown chuckled as Mr. Green placed the first canister into a metal box in the back of their car. “Well, that’s the good ol’ US of A for you, ain’t it? I bet you’d rather get it than have someone else get it, though, wouldn’t you?”
“You’re mighty right. Say, what’s the real name of that Gold Dust stuff, anyway?”
Mr. Brown gave his arm a pat. “It’s a long name that neither one of us could pronounce, let alone understand. I don’t ask the scientists too much. My job is to deliver it to you and bring the tanks back.”
“All right, then. Say, when does that next payment come in?”
The lid on the box slammed shut. Mr. Green stripped off the gloves and dropped them into a second container, which he latched shut. “These sure did feel light. I expected them to have more fluid left in them.” His voice was gruff and abrupt.
Mr. Brown raised an eyebrow, noting his partner’s face was white as a sheet. “The lab boys set the flow rate.”
“Yeah, well.” Mr. Green closed the trunk and wiped a sheen of sweat off his face.
Mr. Brown returned to their conversation. “As we agreed. You’ll get it in six months—that is, if we haven’t heard a word of discussion from you or this community on today’s experiment. Then you’ll get the next payment one year from today. If our secret is kept, you’ll get another ten thousand for the next twenty years on this date.”
Greedy for the first time in his life, Curtis licked his lips thinking about all that money. It was more than he’d ever imagine making as a crop duster, and it required just an hour’s work. A tickle ran up his spine and he shivered. It was his only reaction to the nagging thought that he should have at least questioned them a little more. Still, he never questioned the folks who asked him to spray all that insecticide and defoliant all over the county. And, besides, money talked.
“And I don’t have to report this on my income tax, since it’s cash and all.”
Mr. Brown lowered his shades and winked. “I wouldn’t, if I were you. This is just a little secret between us.”
Curtis winked back. “Say, do you need me to do anything else?” He wished he could see the government men’s eyes. It always made him feel better if he could see into what his grandma called “the windows into people’s souls.” Their shades and blank faces made him think of them as ghosts more than real people. “You know, by this time next year I’ll have a new plane and we can work out a deal…”
“Time to go.” Mr. Green opened the passenger door with a shaking hand. The muscles in his jaws flexed over and over again, as if he were trying to choke down bile.
Mr. Brown patted Curtis’ arm again. “I don’t think we’ll be back. But if we do make it up here again, I promise you’ll be the man for the job.”
“All right, then…” Curtis’ comment floated unheard in the air. Mr. Brown had already headed for the car. He started the engine and shifted into drive almost before the engine smoothed out. They made a sharp turn onto the blacktop road leading south.
Curtis watched the car disappear and frowned. “That tank wasn’t cold when I worked on it.” He studied on it until they disappeared, then returned to his plane to replace his original spray equipment, but only after stuffing both envelopes into the bottom of his toolbox.
Chapter Four
We killed the rest of that hot Saturday puttering around the camp. It was late evening when Aunt Ida Belle finally brought Pepper over to stay. She’d changed out of her Sunday clothes into her cutoffs and what she called a peasant shirt. The shorts were an old pair of jeans, but they weren’t as short as those I’d see them hippie girls wearing on TV. None of the old folks in our county would put up with a girl showing what she had.
Pepper drifted down to see what we were up to while Aunt Ida Belle and Miss Becky shelled peas on the porch. Her music arrived before she did from the transistor radio in her shirt pocket. She was filling out pretty fast, and it was a little crowded in that pocket. “Y’all still planning on camping out in this heat?”
“It’ll cool off after dark.” Mark used a rubber band to pull his hair back on his sweaty neck. Grandpa told us that every time we complained that it was hot. The thing was it always did cool off then, some, but it didn’t help much. It was that time of the year, in the late fall, when the temperature bounced like a rubber ball. It was hotter’n a six-shooter and we were all waiting for the norther that was sure to come at any time and bring us some relief.
It aggravated me that Mark could have hair down to his shoulders since he was full-blood Choctaw, but I had to get a boy’s regular about every six weeks.
“Far out.” Pepper turned up the radio and The Rolling Stones new song “Get Off My Cloud” filled the air. “That’s not the way you do it.” She spun a finger and Mark turned around. She took the rubber band off and did it her way. It looked the same to me, but I knew she only wanted to touch him. “So you guys are going to spend the night out here?”
“Why not? It’s gonna be hot in the house anyway, and besides, it’s something to do.”
A Monkees song came on and she turned it down. “I might join you.”
I sighed. I liked the Monkees, and with her there, I’d be the third wheel again.
Despite the humidity, the night sky was coal-black and the stars glittered bright and distinct. A glow on the northern horizon came from Hugo, Oklahoma. A similar glow to the south was Chisum, on our side of the river. Neither was enough to dampen the Milky Way that looked like smog in outer space.
The fire wouldn’t start and after we wasted half a box of strike-anywheres, I had an idea. Ten minutes later I was back at our camp with half a soup can of gasoline. I splashed it on the thick boards. “Try it now.”
Mark struck a match, and pitched it toward the planks that were nothing more than a dark mound on the ground. The fire caught with a yellow whoosh before it landed. Yellow flame filled the air and the gush of heat burned the hair on my arms. I fell back and we went to stomping out the tent.
“Hotamighty!” Mark’s stomping was frantic.
I laughed. “You look like a Comanche doing a war dance.”
“My shoes are on fire!” He kicked off his tennis shoes and rubbed them in the grass to put ’em out.
Pepper laughed like a loon. “If that don’t beat all. I don’t know why y’all need a fire, anyway. It’s already so hot I’ve about cooked down to clear grease.”
A pair of headlights came up the drive. I recognized Uncle Cody’s El Camino. That meant he was off for the night instead of out being sheriff of Lamar County. There’d been a lot of meanness in Chisum and our little community of Center Springs for the past few years, but we’d finally reached a dry spell and all the adults were feeling pretty good.
The porch light was off, and it was too late to see anything but shapes and shadows in the yard. Hootie’d been lying in a hole he dug under the bodark tree to keep cool, but he took off like a shot. Redheaded Aunt Norma Faye laughed at something Uncle Cody said, and her voice washed over me like a cool drink of water, as it had since they married four years earlier.
The wooden screen door closed behind them with a slap, pop, pop, and Pepper sighed deep and leaned against Mark’s shoulder. She adjusted the volume and “Midnight Confessions” by the Grass Roots filled the night. She squealed. “Outta sight!” She started dancing around our small campfire.
Mark grinned and shook his head. “Ain’t she something?”
“Something, or the other. She looks like you putting out your shoes a few minutes ago. You want to turn that down?”
She flailed around like she had ants in her pants. “Why? It’s not bothering the old folks.”<
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“It’s bothering me. We wanted some peace and quiet, and all that jumping around’s making me hot just watching you.”
For once she didn’t argue.
Pepper fiddled with her radio and sighed. “I wish I had a drink of water. I’m about to get the dry wobbles.” She stared off into the dark for a second and I could tell she was thinking of something else. As usual, she switched subjects in midstream. “I know some history around here.”
Mark barely looked up from the coals. “What?”
She ran her hand up and down Mark’s arm, finally tangling her fingers in his. “There’s a lost gold treasure in Palmer Lake.”
A little over ten miles to the northwest as a crow flies, Palmer Lake was a shallow spread of water not much more’n a deep slough. I’d been there several times with Uncle Cody in the last couple of years, hunting ducks. “No they ain’t.”
“Is too. I heard Daddy and the Wilson boys talk about it up at the store. About a million years ago a Mexican mule train on the way to Louisiana was attacked by Indians and the Mexicans buried a bunch of gold real fast. Most of ’em got killed, but a couple got away. People talked about it for years and then one day this Mexican General showed up with a map and poked around for a long while, but didn’t find anything.”
She paused, thinking. “Then they told about a farmer who plowed up some people bones and rusty old rifle barrels back before Daddy was born, right there where the General camped out. They thought that’s where the gold was buried, but folks dug up most of that land and didn’t find anything else.”
Mark laughed. “That old boy probably made it up and got his land broke up by treasure-hunters before he plowed it. He was pretty smart, if you ask me.”
“I don’t know nothing about that.” Pepper dug a gold coin from the pocket of her jeans. “But I know gold when I see it. Take a look at this.”
We put our heads together to see the firelight reflecting off the coin. I felt something uncoil deep down inside. “Let me hold it.”
Gold Dust Page 3